


One Shots

by May



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Petstuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-11-26 12:31:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/May/pseuds/May
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of ficlets that I've written that are too short to go on their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Uncanny

**Author's Note:**

> As I said, a collection of ficlets that are very short. May span from gen to explicit, and so the rating will probably go up.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After reaching god-tier, Aradia meets one of the soulbots.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For this one, the prompter requested Mirrors and Aradia.

In the warnings about the undead who roamed in the daylight, it was always stated that you looked not for something completely different to yourself, but for something almost exactly the same, but not quite. Look for the hint of the unnatural. That's how you know. In the films, the intrepid heroes would sit in their camp and prepare for sleep as daybreak surfaced on the horizon. They would see strangers in the undead, first - some local nameless rustbloods to begin with, and then as the heroes were picked off, they would see their own returned to them, the same but not.

Aradia was the rustblood, and she was doing it inwards and backwards. Backwards because she'd lived in that thing, and had had no choice but to come to think of it as normal, with his blood the virus interloper in her new veins. Inwards because it was her, and it was revulsion without mourning that she felt when she looked at that thing.

The differences were in the smooth, poreless grey of the metal, in the teeth that were too sharp to match her own. Everything that was half-alive and everything that he'd put in for him.

The one in front of Aradia turned her head, smoothly and without the stretch of tendon under skin. Those too-orange eyes took note of everything, the curl of Aradia's bright horns, her god-tier garb and her fine red wings. A soulbot took a dead mind and welded it to something that was more than machine, but still not quite full sentience, although sentient enough to be aware. The soulbot reacted in whirrs and ticks instead of the twitching of complex facial muscles.

There was no point in staying, and so Aradia dove and flew away. There were countless numbers, if there could be any at all and revived, undying Aradia was going to avoid every single one of them, if she could.

It was often wondered whether a changed undead had any understanding of what it had become, whether they knew that they were doomed to stay that way. It was lucky, perhaps, that she had been the one who had progressed to the meteor and then been allowed to go from there.


	2. Shoulder Wound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Equius insists its an impropriety to see your moirail half-naked. Nepeta scoffs at the idea.

Equius had told her, once, that it was inappropriate that moirails see...that much of each other. Nepeta's response had been that he was being very silly and that her shoulder seemed to be sprained enough that it really didn't matter that she was topless. Anyway, she'd read the books, watched the films, listened to the songs - she knew what moirails did and didn't do. And he didn't.

He was assured of the fact that she didn't make him sweat. At least, not in that way. There was, though, always the fear. Vacillation was a thing, but it was improper. A couple swinging from the brilliant, chaste diamond of moirallegiance into matespritship or, gosh forbid, kismesittude, would be ostracized, maybe even culled.

"It's not as serious as that, Equius!" she'd sighed. "As long as you're in the right purrlace for the drones, who even cares?"

"Lots of people will care, Nepeta," he replied, tersely. "People will talk."

"Who?"

"Vriska." he said.

"Equius, Vwhiskers is always kind of mean," countered Nepeta. "Anyway, you aren't going to be driven mad by the sight of my venom sacs and go furlushed for me. I promouse."

She looked at him, coyly.

"Besides, mine aren't exactly inpurresting. I'm not Aradia."

Equius felt his face turn blue as his hands became noticeably clammier. "It's not about...those," he stammered. "They aren't a useful part of troll anatomy. If they were no longer vestigial, then they might be worth looking at. It's the principle."

"Okay, then." Nepeta smiled, sweetly, before pouting. "Anyway, my shoulder is spurrained, I think, and I need you to rub my back for me and I know that you will do your best to be carefur."

Equius sighed. "Fine, but only because it's an emergency," he said. "And if you keep sustaining injuries while hunting, then you should stop."

"No." Nepeta grabbed the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head. Equius tensed, but did not find himself as yet overcome with lust, although he frowned at her lack of a harness. She dropped her shirt on the floor and reached up an irritated hand to massage her shoulder a little with a hiss. She moved to sit in front of him and he began, with the most pain-stakingly gentle fingers to begin massaging the muscles in her back.

"Do mew feel the urge to pail me into the floor, meow?" she asked, lightly.

"Most assuredly not." Nepeta wriggled a little under his fingers and he felt her muscles begin to relax. 

"Your hands don't feel sweaty," she said, then. "We're still moirails. Don't worry."

Cooly, he smiled.  
"Ssshhhh," she hushed."We are more sure than ever."


	3. Police Troll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terezi is a sniffer troll working for the police.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These are a couple of excerpts I wrote when thinking about petstuck and troll pheromones and stuff. It's a small AU where Terezi is a sniffer troll for the police and she and her handler are looking for a criminal called English and has a pet troll with purple blood. I just wrote a couple of ficlets and thought I'd put them here for posterity because I like them.

Handler

 

She curls around your feet, her narrow limbs splayed flat against the ground. She's found something; you can tell before she tells you. She can smell like no human can, and communicate like no dog can. The force loves her and, sometimes, she barely goes an hour without licking something delicious off of somebody's hand. She sits up, dainty and neat in her tiny uniform, which is simpler and easier to clean than yours. She has a fancier one for special occasions, because well-behaved force animals like trolls are allowed to attend certain events, now. She goes to those with you, her little paw in your hand, smiling sweetly and talking politely to your superiors. She's clever and can make them laugh. You tell her, jokingly, that you should watch out for her stealing your job. She laughs, then - a strange whistling sound - and asks you for some of the candy she knows you keep in your pocket. You couldn't keep it from her if you tried.

 

Now, on the sidewalk, she tangles her claws together on her lap. "I can smell him waiting."

 

"He's waiting?"

 

"Yes, he was already here." She angles her body forward a little and catches a scent in the air. "And he has his own troll." Terezi wrinkles her nose. "Purple blood."

 

Extraction

When you ask what she's doing, she explains like she expected you to know, anyway. You don't, but you don't think it matters too much.

 

"I'm waiting for him to wake up," she says.

 

"And why is that?" you say. "You do know that he's going to be detained, don't you? He was English's pet."

 

"Yes." She straightens her narrow shoulders. "But I think I can get things out of him that you can't."

 

You smile and pat her on the head and then scratch gently at the base of one of her small, pointed horns. "You're a good girl, but some trolls are dangerous."

 

She looks at you like you've just told her the sky was blue. You almost feel bad about patronising her, but the purpleblood is why other trolls need protection.

 

"I know," she replies, her voice quiet. "That's why you need me. You don't know how much he stinks."

 

You think of her twitching, sensitive nose.

 

"We'll give him a bath once we've examined him..." you say.

 

"I don't mean that," she says, and then she sighs, and you're the one who doesn't understand, again. "Give me five minutes with him."

 

You want to issue a resounding no; anything could happen and you still aren't sure what she means. She stares up at you, her blank eyes resolute, and she rests a firm hand on your wrist. You can watch, you reason, and you're in close enough range to intervene if anything goes wrong.

 

Terezi, small and straight backed, creeps into the cell the purpleblood troll is in. He reacts to her presence and growls, showing his large steak-knife teeth. He's bigger than her, you note, and that's without his long horns. You worry that he's going to attack like his life depends on it; English did not treat him well. She confronts him, though, and cups his face in her hands. She tilts it towards hers and he shakes, still snarling. She runs her thumbs along the lines of his cheekbones, bringing her face closer to his. It seems like she's whispering or, at least, making a series of noises that are likely inhuman. She does that, sometimes - chirps and purrs, particularly when she's off-duty and tired or comfortable. She blushes teal when she does it in front of strangers. You don't think she's embarrassed, now, though.

 

She's all sharp edges in a smart uniform and he's ragged, his limbs ropey. He's slowing to a low shake in her hands and rests his head, with its long horns sticking straight outwards, into the crook of her neck. One of her hands slips up to brush around the root of his horn, like you idly do to her. You think she still looks a little curtly professional, even there.


	4. Holes In His Pan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gamzee can only visit Kurloz once every few months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains possible dub-con/non-con.

He straddles your lap and you skirt round the edge of his mind. You can't get in, of course, but you're aware of where he seeps through the holes in his pan. You don't need much to get his claws into your shoulders or his teeth...anywhere. He shifts forward on your bulge and constricts you. He's getting better. This is what you can't ask for. An entire society has come to a head in him, and he's perfect in the rage that sits in his gut. A push and he lets it out onto you. You watched Alternia and you saw another you, old and cruel. You were never meant to be His personal guide, though.

Over perigees, Gamzee gets taller. It would happen imperceptively, except you have to see him when the bubble catches his physical body. You need to see him more, but he tells you that he can't, that the dream bubbles aren't where he goes when he sleeps. He sleeps when meeting with you, sometimes. When he's prone, he's always sprawled out - sometimes across you, sometimes beside you . It's not always sound sleep. He never screams like you once did, however; he just shifts and whines. When he does this, you reach over and run a hand up through his hair and around the root of his horn. Your movements are soft and repetitive and Gamzee frowns but he settles just a little. Beforus taught you that in lieu of having you live your life underneath the catacomb moon as he had done.

His eyes are shut tight and you think of the nightmares of the Alternian trolls. The running blood of generations. He has holes in his pan, but it needed to be.

The next time you see him, you notice when he screws himself down onto your bulge that he's thinner than usual. He's still alive, so his body is changing as he gets older and, as it is, he's still visibly younger than you. You think, though, that moving through paradox space as he is doing wears away at him. It eats at him. It doesn't stop him from standing upright, anyway, and going forward, again. He rarely tells you things that have no direct purpose in your plans but, this time, after he wakes up, he stares into the bubble and tells you that he never used to know that he wouldn't mind dying and dying again when he can't die at all. He tells you that, now, that's what he'll both when he's asleep and when he's awake.


End file.
